Part 5 (1/2)

The religion of the Brahmans was egoistic. Buddha had compa.s.sion on men, he loved them, and preached love to his disciples. It was just this word of sympathy of which despairing souls were in need. He bade to love even those who do us ill. Purna, one of his disciples, went forth to preach to the barbarians. Buddha said to him to try him, ”There are cruel, pa.s.sionate, furious men; if they address angry words to you, what would you think?” ”If they addressed angry words to me,”

said Purna, ”I should think these are good men, these are gentle men, these men who attack me with wicked words but who strike me neither with the hand nor with stones.” ”But if they strike you, what would you think?” ”I should think that those were good men who did not strike me with their staves or with their swords.” ”But if they did strike you with staff and sword, what would you think then?” ”That those are good men who strike me with staff and sword, but do not take my life.” ”But if they should take your life?” ”I should think them good men who delivered me with so little pain from this body filled as it is with pollution.” ”Well, well, Purna! You may dwell in the country of the barbarians. Go, proceed on the way to complete Nirvana and bring others to the same goal.”

=Fraternity.=--The Brahmans, proud of their caste, a.s.sert that they are purer than the others. Buddha loves all men equally, he calls all to salvation even the pariahs, even the barbarians--all he declares are equal. ”The Brahman,” said he, ”just like the pariah, is born of woman; why should he be n.o.ble and the other vile?” He receives as disciples street-sweepers, beggars, cripples, girls who sleep on dung-hills, even murderers and thieves; he fears no contamination in touching them. He preaches to them in the street in language simple with parables.

=Tolerance.=--The Brahmans pa.s.sed their lives in the practice of minute rites, regarding as criminal whoever did not observe them.

Buddha demanded neither rites nor exertions. To secure salvation it was enough to be charitable, chaste, and beneficent. ”Benevolence,”

says he, ”is the first of virtues. Doing a little good avails more than the fulfilment of the most arduous religious tasks. The perfect man is nothing unless he diffuses himself in benefits over creatures, unless he comforts the afflicted. My doctrine is a doctrine of mercy; this is why the fortunate in the world find it difficult.”

=Later History of Buddhism.=--Thus was established about 500 years before Christ a religion of an entirely new sort. It is a religion without a G.o.d and without rites; it ordains only that one shall love his neighbor and become better; annihilation is offered as supreme recompense. But, for the first time in the history of the world, it preaches self-renunciation, the love of others, equality of mankind, charity and tolerance. The Brahmans made bitter war upon it and extirpated it in India. Missionaries carried it to the barbarians in Ceylon, in Indo-China, Thibet, China, and j.a.pan. It is today the religion of about 500,000,000[26] people.

=Changes in Buddhism.=--During these twenty centuries Buddhism has undergone change. Buddha had himself formed communities of monks.

Those who entered these renounced their family, took the vow of poverty and chast.i.ty; they had to wear filthy rags and beg their living. These religious rapidly multiplied; they founded convents in all Eastern Asia, gathered in councils to fix the doctrine, proclaimed dogmas and rules. As they became powerful they, like the Brahmans, came to esteem themselves as above the rest of the faithful. ”The layman,” they said, ”plight to support the religious and consider himself much honored that the holy man accepts his offering. It is more commendable to feed one religious than many thousands of laymen.”

In Thibet the religious, men and women together, const.i.tute a fifth of the entire population, and their head, the Grand Lama, is venerated as an incarnation of G.o.d.

At the same time that they transformed themselves into masters, the Buddhist religious constructed a complicated theology, full of fantastic figures. They say there is an infinite number of worlds. If one surrounded with a wall a s.p.a.ce capable of holding 100,000 times ten millions of those worlds, if this wall were raised to heaven, and if the whole s.p.a.ce were filled with grains of mustard, the number of the grains would not even then equal one-half the number of worlds which occupy but one division of heaven. All these worlds are full of creatures, G.o.ds, men, beasts, demons, who are born and who die. The universe itself is annihilated and another takes its place. The duration of each universe is called _kalpa_; and this is the way we obtain an impression of a kalpa: if there were a rock twelve miles in height, breadth, and length, and if once in a century it were only touched with a piece of the finest linen, this rock would be worn and reduced to the size of a kernel of mango before a quarter of a kalpa had elapsed.

=Buddha Transformed into a G.o.d.=--It no longer satisfied the Buddhists to honor their founder as a perfect man; they made him a G.o.d, erecting idols to him, and offering him wors.h.i.+p. They adored also the saints, his disciples; pyramids and shrines were built to preserve their bones, their teeth, their cloaks. From every quarter the faithful came to venerate the impression of the foot of Buddha.

=Mechanical Prayer.=--Modern Buddhists regard prayer as a magical formula which acts of itself. They spend the day reciting prayers as they walk or eat, often in a language which they do not understand.

They have invented prayer-machines; these are revolving cylinders and around these are pasted papers on which the prayer is written; every turn of the cylinder counts for the utterance of the prayer as many times as it is written on the papers.

=Amelioration of Manners.=--And yet Buddhism remains a religion of peace and charity. Wherever it reigns, kings refrain from war, and even from the chase; they establish hospitals, caravansaries, even asylums for animals. Strangers, even Christian missionaries, are hospitably received; they permit the women to go out, and to walk without veiling themselves; they neither fight nor quarrel. At Bangkok, a city of 400,000 souls, hardly more than one murder a year is known.

Buddhism has enfeebled the intelligence and sweetened the character.[27]

FOOTNOTES:

[22] The process is as follows: when a word (or rather a root) is found in several Aryan languages at once, it is admitted that this was in use before the dispersion occurred, and therefore the people knew the object designated by the word.

[23] The Punjab.--ED.

[24] Prayer of the Mahabarata cited by Lenormant.

[25] A spirituous liquor made by the natives.--ED.

[26] A high estimate.--ED.

[27] India is for us the country of the Vedas, the Brahmans, and Buddha.

We know the religion of the Hindoos, but of their political history we are ignorant.

CHAPTER VI

THE PERSIANS

THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER

=Iran.=--Between the Tigris and the Indus, the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf rises the land of Iran, five times as great as France,[28] but partly sterile. It is composed of deserts of burning sand and of icy plateaux cut by deep and wooded valleys. Mountains surround it preventing the escape of the rivers which must lose themselves in the sands or in the salt lakes. The climate is harsh, very uneven, torrid in summer, frigid in winter; in certain quarters one pa.s.ses from 104 above zero to 40 below, from the cold of Siberia to the heat of Senegal. Violent winds blow which ”cut like a sword.”